The excellent Madame Bernard had been Angela's governess before the
child had been sent to the convent, on the Trinità dei Monti, and
whenever she was at home for the holidays, and also during the brief
interval between her leaving school and going into society; and after
that, during the winter which preceded Prince Chiaromonte's death, she
had accompanied the motherless girl to concerts and had walked with
her almost daily in the mornings. She was one of those thoroughly
trustworthy, sound-minded, well-educated Frenchwomen of the middle
class of whom many are to be found in the provinces, though the type
is rare in Paris; nearly fifty years of age, she had lived twenty
years in Rome, always occupying the same little apartment in a
respectable street of Trastevere, where she had a spare room which she
was glad to let to any French or English lady of small means who came
to Rome for a few months in the winter and spring.
Angela sent her maid for Madame Bernard on the day of the catastrophe,
since her aunt neither offered to take her in at once nor seemed
inclined to suggest any arrangement for the future. The Marchesa did,
indeed, take charge of everything in the Palazzo Chiaromonte within an
hour of her brother-in-law's death; she locked the drawers of his
private desk herself, sent for the notary and had the customary seals
placed on the doors of the inner apartments 'in the name of the
heirs'; she spoke with the undertaker and made every arrangement for
the customary lying in state of the body during the following night
and day; saw to the erection of the temporary altar at which masses
for the dead would be celebrated almost without interruption from
midnight to noon by sixteen priests in succession; gave full
instructions to the effect that the men-servants should take their
turn of duty in regular watches, day and night, until the funeral; and
finally left the palace, after showing herself to be an exceedingly
practical woman.
When she went away, she was holding her handkerchief to her eyes with
both hands and she forgot her parasol; but she remembered it as she was
just going out by the postern, her carriage being outside because the
gates were shut, and she sent her footman back for it and for the little
morocco bag in which she carried her handkerchief and card-case. It was
a small matter, but the porter, the footman, and the butler upstairs all
remembered it afterwards, and the footman himself, while coming down,
took the trouble to look into the little wallet, and saw that the
card-case was there, but nothing else; for the Marchesa sometimes
carried certain little cigarettes in it, which the man had found
particularly good. But to-day there was not even one.
Madame Bernard arrived in tears, for she was a warm-hearted woman, and
was overcome with sympathy for the lonely girl. She found Angela
sitting by a small fire in her own little morning-room on the upper
floor. A tray with something to eat had been set beside her, she knew
not by whom, but she had not tasted anything. Her eyes were dry, but
her hands were burning and when she was conscious of feeling anything
she knew that her head ached. She had forgotten that she had sent for
the governess, and looked at her with a vaguely wondering expression
as if she took the kindly Frenchwoman in black for a new shadow in her
dream.
But presently mechanical consciousness returned, though without much
definite sensation, and she let Madame Bernard have her way in
everything, not making the slightest resistance or offering the
smallest suggestion; she even submitted to being fed like a little
child, with small mouthfuls of things that had no taste whatever for
her.
By and by there was a dressmaker in the room, with an assistant, and
servants brought a number of big bandboxes with lids covered with
black oilcloth; and Angela's maid was there, too, and they tried one
thing after another on her, ready-made garments for the first hours of
mourning. Then they were gone, and she was dressed in black, and the
room was filled with the unmistakable odour of black crape, which is
not like anything else in the world.
Again time passed, and she was kneeling at a faldstool in the great
hall downstairs; but a dark screen had been placed so that she could
not be seen by any one who came in to kneel at the rail that divided
the upper part of the hall from the lower; and she saw nothing
herself--nothing but a Knight of Malta, in his black cloak with the
great white Maltese cross on his shoulder, lying asleep on his back;
and on each side of him three enormous wax torches were burning in
silver candlesticks taller than a tall man.
Quite at the end of the hall, five paces from the Knight's motionless
head, three priests in black and silver vestments were kneeling before
a black altar, reciting the Penitential Psalms in a quiet, monotonous
voice, verse and verse, the one in the middle leading; and Angela
automatically joined the two assistants in responding, but so low that
they did not hear her.
The Knight bore a resemblance to her father, that was all. Perhaps it
was only a waxen image she saw, or a wraith in that long dream of
hers, of which she could not quite remember the beginning. She knew
that she was nothing to the image, and that it was nothing to her.
While her lips repeated the grand dirge of the King-poet in Saint
Jerome's noble old Latin words, her thoughts followed broken threads,
each cut short by a question that lacks an answer, by the riddle man
has asked of the sky and the sea and the earth since the beginning:
What does it mean?
What could it mean? The senseless facts were there, plain enough.
That morning she had seen her father, she had kissed his hand in the
old-fashioned way, and he had kissed her forehead, and they had
exchanged a few words, as usual. She remembered that for the thousandth
time she had wished that his voice would soften a little and that he
would put his arms round her and draw her closer to him. But he had been
just as always, for he was bound and stiffened in the unwieldy armour of
his conventional righteousness. Angela had read of the Puritans in
history, and an Englishman might smile at the thought that she could not
fancy the sternest of them as more thoroughly puritanical than her
father, who had been brought up by priests from his childhood. But such
as he was, he had been her father that morning. The motionless figure of
the Knight of Malta on the black velvet pall was not he, nor a likeness
of him, nor anything human at all. It was the outward visible presence
of death, it was a dumb thing that knew the answer to the riddle but
could not tell it; in a way, it was the riddle itself.
While her half-stunned intelligence stumbled among chasms of thought
that have swallowed up transcendent genius, her lips unconsciously
said the Penitential Psalms after the priests at the altar. At the
convent she had been a little vain of knowing them by heart better
than the nuns themselves, for she had a good memory, and she had often
been rebuked for taking pride in her gift. It was not her fault if the
noble poetry meant nothing to her at the most solemn hour of her life,
though its deep human note had appealed profoundly to her the last
time she had repeated the words. Nothing meant anything now, in the
face of the unanswered riddle; nothing but the answer could have any
meaning.
The great apostle of modern thought asked three questions: What can I
know? As a reasoning being what is it my duty to do in life? What may
I dare to hope hereafter? Angela had never even heard of Kant; she
only asked what it all meant; and the Knight of Malta was silent under
the steady yellow light of the six wax torches. Perhaps the white
cross on his cloak was the answer, but the emblem was too far from
words for mere humanity to understand it. She wished they would take
him away, for he was not her father, and she would be far better able
to pray alone in her own room than in the stately presence of that one
master whom all living things fear, man and bird and beast, and
whatsoever has life in the sea.
To pray, yes; but for what? Rebellious against outward things, the
girl's prime intuition told her that her father was quite separated
from his mortal symbol now, having suddenly left that which could
change to become a part of the unknown truth, which must be
unchangeable if it is true; invisible, without form or dimension,
'being' not 'living,' 'conscious' not 'aware,' 'knowing' not 'seeing,'
'eternal' not 'immortal.' That might be the answer, but it meant too
much for a girl to grasp, and explained too little to be comforting.
The threads of thought broke short off again, and Angela's lips went
on making words, while she gazed unwinking on the Knight's
expressionless face.
Suddenly her mind awoke again in a sort of horror of darkness, and her
lips ceased from moving for a while, for she was terrified.
Was there anything beyond? Was it really God who had taken her father
from her in an instant, or was it a blind force that had killed him,
striking in the dark? If that was the answer, what was there left?
The sensitive girl shivered. Perhaps no bodily danger could have sent
that chill through her. It began in her head and crept quickly to her
hands and then to her feet, for it was not a fear of death that came
upon her, nor of anything outward. To lose life was nothing, if there
was heaven beyond; pain, torture, martyrdom would be nothing if God
the good was standing on the other side. All life was but one long
opportunity for sinning, and to lose it while in grace was to be safe
for ever; so much she had been taught and until now she had believed
it. But what loss could be compared with losing God? There were
unbelievers in the world, of course, but she could not understand how
they could still live on, and laugh, and seek pleasure and feel it
keenly. What had they to fill the void of their tremendous loss?
Surely, not to believe was not to hope, to be for ever without hope
was the punishment of the damned, and to live hopeless in the world
was to suffer the pains of hell on earth.
She felt them now. 'The pains of hell gat hold upon me,' she moaned,
heedless of the priest's recitation. Darkness rose like a flood-tide
all round her and she shut her eyes to keep it out, for her will
fought for hope, as her body would have struggled against drowning. It
was no longer a mere question that assailed her, but imminent
destruction itself.
It passed away this first time and she grew calm again. Not to believe
was sin, and against all sin, prayer and steadfast will must be
availing. The will, she had; she could remember many prayers, too, and
say them earnestly, and was thankful for her memory which held orisons
in readiness for every circumstance of daily duty or spiritual life.
From her childhood she had found a gentle delight in the Church's
liturgies and hymns, and now, as she prayed with the forms of language
she had always loved, habit brought back belief to lighten her
darkness. She still felt the bitter cold of the outer night that was
very near her; but she kept it off now, and warmed her poor little
soul in the fervour of her praying till she felt that she was coming
again to life and hope.
She opened her eyes at last and saw that nothing was changed. The
Knight of Malta slept on, as he was to sleep for ever; the priests
knelt motionless before the black altar; their quiet, monotonous
voices went on with the Penitential Psalms as priests had said them
for at least fifteen centuries. Angela listened till she caught the
words and then began to respond again, and once more her thoughts
followed broken threads.
Surely, by all she had been taught, her father was in heaven already.
It was not possible that any human being should obey every written and
unwritten ordinance of his religion more strictly than he had done
ever since she could remember him. He had been severe, almost to
cruelty, but he had been quite as unyieldingly austere in dealing with
himself. He had fasted rigidly, not only when fasts were ordered, but
of his free will when others only abstained, he had never begun a day
without hearing mass nor a week without confession and communion, he
had retired into spiritual retreat in Lent, he had prayed early and
late; in his dealings with men, he had not done to others what he
would not have had them do to him, he had not said of his neighbour
what he would not have said of himself, he had wronged no man; he had
given much to charity and more to the 'imprisoned' head of the Church.
He had so lived that no confessor could justly find fault with him,
and he had never failed to pray for those in whom he discerned any
shortcoming.
Who would condemn such a just person? Not God, surely. Therefore when
his life had ended so suddenly that morning, his soul had been taken
directly to heaven.
Such righteousness as his had venial sins to expiate, what hope was
there left for men of ordinary earthly passions and failings?
It was a consolation to think of that, Angela told herself, now that
the tide of darkness had ebbed back to the depth of terror whence it
had risen; and when at last the long dream slowly dissolved before
returning reality the lonely girl's eyes overflowed with natural tears
at the thought that her father's motionless lips would never move
again, even to reprove her, and that she was looking for the last time
on all that earth still held of him who had given her life.